


Ivy

by vanitaslaughing



Series: Mark of the Dreamer [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 11:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Liliris finds a temple and a stranger. And perhaps an answer to a question she never got to ask Ariadne - if that was really her name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Chapter 8 of Amaranthus.

“… _Loquus?”_

“ _Get out of here, Iris. Just take your things and go – I know Aria lied for you.”_

“ _Then why didn’t you--”_

“ _Call her out on it? Iris, Ariadne just turned the blame around and_ _placed it_ _entirely on her_ _self_ _, and if I ca_ _n_ _prevent you from dying I will; Ariadne knew that. So take your things, and leave Insomnia. Now. Go.”_

“ _But…_ _!”_

“ _No. You need to leave. Leave and scatter your tracks – you have three days, then I will have to start at least half-heartedly chasing you. But know that if you share this secret, we will know sooner than you can anticipate. And next time there will be neither me nor Ariadne to buy you time.”_

* * *

It was the same route she had taken while on her way back to Insomnia from the study trip. She vaguely remembered the way now that she was sitting at a haven, patting the Chocobo she had purchased shortly after leaving the city, and watched Daemons slink about in the dark. It had been a year by now but she still didn’t quite dare to hope that somewhere out there her friend was once more around. She could have tried looking for her, but now that she had had time to think, she realised many things.

First and foremost she remembered a passage on Dreamers. There was a chance that she was involved with at least one other person, and they would not get reborn until all people in a group had died. If Ariadne had been the first to go, then she would have to wait for her companions all by herself. And it was all her fault, her friend would have to wait out there somewhere between life and death on her own – the thought alone was enough to make Liliris’ heart skip several beats.

The bird chirped lowly and butted its head against her shoulder. Somewhere in the distance the low rumble of an Iron Giant creaking to life was heard, and Liliris buried her face in the soft plumage. This bird was everything she had; she had dropped her belongings into a ditch at some point and deliberately fought some creature so there would be blood on it. Perhaps that would convince the men that were certain to come after her that she had died somewhere out here in Lucis. The kingdom was certainly big enough to dodge people.

Liliris sighed into the feathers. The Chocobo chirped again.

That was her life now, and she owed it to a dead woman who might have been reborn somewhere else entirely already.

* * *

Time passed, and she had to admit she understood now why people in the past, and especially the royals, travelled so much. There was something magical about climbing the stone spines scattered across Duscae; the view itself on a clear day was absolutely breathtaking and laid bare the beauty of the country. The woods seemed to whisper during summer rain and the Rock of Ravatogh would ceaselessly spill forth smoke in the distance. The cities and villages sprinkled across the land were all different according to which region she was in, the lakes and rivers and streams that bubbled and moved about. The wildlife that moved about at its own pace… and the vegetation she knew that was changing. It always numbed her when she remembered that there was still some godly prophecy to take place, of one protected by the gods to fight against what seemingly oozed darkness.

Liliris had a clear image of what that person was like. Betrayal stung, and clearly that prince would have long lost his marbles and senses; perhaps he roamed about as some creature half-turned. There were enough Daemons about for that to be plausible.

She swept her hand over the ruined wall. It was another long since gone temple without any trace of which of the Astrals had been worshipped there. It could have been Ifrit, but it could have been dedicated to Sylphs for all she and the modern world knew. It had been erased from history – or so she thought.

There was something underneath a clump of ivy, and she slowly reached out to brush the plant aside. Ivy, she remembered, was one of the species that was adapting to darkness. Useless in the long run, but nevertheless a familiar plant that would remain once darkness set in. She shuddered and finally pushed the plant aside.

A familiar mark. Etched into what looked like it had once been a decoration of a sort, perhaps part of a statue that no longer existed. Liliris held her breath for a few moments before exhaling shakily. The Mark of the Dreamer. The one thing she had suddenly been so obsessed with that it drove everything to ruin. Now that she had had time to reflect on it, she understood why she had pushed the topic so. Studying vegetation and the changes she had noticed had scared her. Reminded her that somewhere in the future everything would be dark, and she had absolutely no influence of what would come to pass in there days.

“Mhm. I certainly did not expect anyone else to know of this place.”

She let out a surprised yelp and nearly fell while jumping back on her feet and turning around.

The man behind her had most of his face covered by a hood, but it was pretty clear to see that he was wearing clothes that seemed to belong into the last century at the very least. He looked unassuming enough and there were more weirdos like him in Insomnia than Liliris liked to remember, she remained wary.

“Can I help you?”

A laugh – his voice was certainly melodic and captivating. “No, I was merely wondering how the Sleeper ended up in the Carbuncle’s lair.”

“The Sl-- Wait.” She looked back at the stone behind her. “You know what this place is.”

“But of course.”

Liliris closed her eyes. “Which means you’re a historian, a Dreamer – or the Accursed. Barely anyone nowadays knows about this.”

“Oho? What does that make you then – a historian, a Dreamer, or perhaps the Accursed?”

“...”

“I would assume one can call this situation ‘checkmate’, for the both of us.”

“Yes.”

He grinned underneath his hood and something compelled her to grin back. It was the first time in so long she had spoken to _anyone,_ and this entire situation was so absurd that it looped around to being rather amusing. Thus she grinned back before shrugging.

“You might call me a historian. I learned this during my studies, although I had no idea this place was here. What about you, sir?”

“… A Dreamer.” He finally pulled off his hood and squinted into the setting sun. “Unlike you I knew this place was here, however.”

He looked perfectly unassuming, with his long hair tied into a loose ponytail that was slung over his shoulder. Other than the outlandishly old-style clothes he looked like just about every average Lucian, much like Liliris herself. His eyes on the other hand seemed to carry a spark, not unlike the one Ariadne had when she had told Loquus that she had just been about to tell his sister of the story she unearthed.

She nodded at him and turned back to look at the ruin. There was something enchanting about it now, as if it had started glowing all of a sudden, and Liliris nearly took a step into what had been halls once. But just as she was about to move, the man behind her cleared his throat. She stopped and turned to look at him instead – the spell of the ruin had been broken when she did so.

“Wait.” He looked rather puzzled. “You call yourself a historian but do not go make certain that what I said was not a lie?”

“I knew a Dreamer once. She had the same look as you just had by the time her memories reawakened, thus I’m inclined to believe you.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged again. Ariadne was long dead, so even if he asked about her that would be all she’d be able to say. She didn’t want to tell some stranger about how she had effectively murdered her best friend.

He didn’t ask. The sun was nearly done setting, and it wouldn’t be too long before the Daemons would come crawling out of the woods. Her Chocobo – and his, somewhere nearby – was getting nervous and clicked its beak several times and chirped.

“There’s a Haven nearby. We should go there before the last light vanishes.”

“Indeed.” He looked rather unimpressed by the lurking danger of sunset.

* * *

The campfire crackled merrily, but the silence felt choking. After a few minutes Liliris cleared her throat and decided to finally introduce herself. Maybe she’d get something out of this Dreamer yet.

“I’m Liliris.”

“… Ardyn.”

She held her breath. It was definitely just a coincidence, it absolutely had to be. But that was the name of the man who had been executed for allegedly being a priest of Ifrit who had his hands in the deaths of the king before the Founder and the Founder’s half-brother – the man who should have been on the throne. He must have noticed how surprised she looked, because he grinned once more.

“Names are peculiar things, are they not. Everyone has one, some even more than that, but they are easily changed and discarded. And some most Dreamers have quite a few names before they get to do what they gave up their death for.”

“Is… Are… Was Ardyn your name before you--”

“No. No, my name was Lux once upon a time.”

His smile was still there, but it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. Liliris poked a stick into the fire.

“You said you knew a Dreamer. Since you spoke of her in past tense, I assume she died; my condolences. Alas, you’ve picked my interest – do you know if she finished her goal and broke through the cycle, or gave up?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know; but I don’t think she either completed her task or gave up. The last time I saw her she was… she looked so determined. I assume she… she knew that she’d get another chance even if her life as Ariadne ended.”

Liliris didn’t see it, but he narrowed his eyes for a split second. Thus, when she looked up, she just saw him stare into the fire.

“If I may – why did you become a Dreamer?”

“Most Dreamers don’t get the chance to object. They die with a task undone, and if their desire to see it fulfilled no matter the price, Carbuncle hears them out. Once upon a time that might have been different, but ever since the minor Astrals died out the drat thing has gotten rather selective with whom it allows another chance. I myself had a task undone, and died too early to see it through; my prayers were answered. But there are plenty of other people who were not as… questionably fortunate as me.”

“Questionably fortunate?”

“Do you think being a Dreamer is fun?”

She blinked. Silence fell over the Haven once more, for a few minutes. Eventually Ardyn shook his head and grinned at her.

“You die. You live again, blissfully unaware of what happened before. And then you remember – you remember every single life of yours. Depending on how long you’ve been a Dreamer, that’s a handful of deaths. Or hundreds of deaths. Violent ones, deserved ones – undeserved ones. There’s the peaceful ones. The ones where you just vanish in your sleep. The ones where your entire body is wrecked with the Starscourge, the ones where you find yourself just surrounded by enemies. The list goes on, endlessly, the longer you’ve been a Dreamer. And even if you don’t remember it fully yet, there’s always your dreams, telling you stories of lives long past – fire that consumes your body, weapons that tear through your skin, the hopeless fights you found yourself in. The sickness that ate away at your body, the nights you spent out in the wild hunting Daemons for a living. The royal line of Lucis you saw ascend, perhaps even one day will see lose the throne, the longer days, the shorter nights, the changes to the entire world surrounding you...”

“… It sounds like… you’ve been here for a while.”

Ardyn picked at his sleeves instead of answering. He was probably trying to tell her that the fact he wore fashion from a few hundred years ago was just a testament to that, and Liliris nodded slowly.

“I see. I had… I had no idea that all of that happened.” A wave of guilt hit her – she had probably triggered the memories to start returning when she had cornered Ariadne. All those confused, far-away looks suddenly made sense. “There was… so much I didn’t understand.”

He rolled his eyes. “Truly now, do you believe mortals or even Dreamers get to know all? There is quite a lot that only the gods know and keep it from the people. Somewhere out there are the Accursed and Ifrit, plotting nothing but doom.”

“… Actually, I have a question, if you permit. Concerning the Accursed and Ifrit… Is it true that the Accursed was… that he was… simply a prince?”

Again, a grin. But this time it reached his eyes, and it looked very disconcerting at best. It was unnerving and she was quite certain his eyes glinted yellow for a second – even though there was a campfire it was too dark to see.

“I do think I understand now. But yes, you are quite correct. Out there, somewhere on Eos, is the man who should have sat on the throne. Discarded by gods and Oracles, he eventually decided that he would do what they expected him to do. A Healer, now the Accursed. But, pray tell – how do _you_ know that? Most Dreamers are aware of this because they lived back then; but you are a mortal woman.”

‘ _Run away,’_ was what her inner voice told her, but Liliris was done running.

“I lived in Insomnia in the past; my brother works under the Lucis family. Due to relations to the council I had access to the royal library. I did some digging after finding inconsistencies, and eventually learned of all that. The Dreamer I knew confirmed it with her reactions.”

“And I assume the reason she died is because she covered you.”

“… Yes.”

He snorted and rolled his eyes once more before leaning backwards and letting himself fall to the ground. “Stupid Aranea.”

“Ara… Aranea?”

“The Dreamer you knew. She sounds almost exactly like this woman I once knew. And as far as I’m aware, she’s a Dreamer. It would make sense for her to have been Aranea once and your friend next.”

Ardyn fell silent after this. Liliris didn’t ask again.

* * *

He was gone the next morning. So were both Chocobos.

Liliris had awoken some time after sunrise and had expected pretty much this. Groggily she stood up and looked around expecting nothing, and got nothing in return. The bird she had cared for for so long had gone with a complete stranger – perhaps he’d been a breeder in a past life.

Or perhaps he simply hadn’t had a past life and the Accursed had preferred to take her bird instead of her life. There was no use mulling over this, and Liliris went back to the ivy-entangled ruin.

It still stood as unmoving and empty as it had just yesterday, but Liliris still had to take a deep breath before walking into the ruin.

Once upon a time this might have been a gorgeous building, judging by the splinters of coloured stone and marble that lay about. All that remained was rubble, pillars, perhaps the odd half of a painting – and ivy. It grew in such large abundance that Liliris wondered if it had been grown here as decoration even before the place had been abandoned. Knowing architecture it most likely had been; temples with dedicated priests had at least one magic-using priest amongst their ranks before the fall of Solheim. And given that Solheim had been technologically advanced before its decline, a temple filled with water and plants as a small oasis in the middle of nature untouched by civilisation otherwise made a lot of sense. It made the whole ruin seem somewhat serene despite the fact it was broken beyond repair.

It calmed Liliris’ nerves – and Carbuncle was the minor Astral that watched over dreams and the ones wandering the paths between life and death, after all. To wander these paths one needed a certain amount of trust and calmness, after all.

The further she went in, the more slightly intact things she found. Writing on half-broken walls in Sol, paintings that clearly depicted differently coloured Carbuncles and Dreamers. When she reached a room that must have been closed to the public back when this temple was in use, she sunk to her knees.

Statues of the minor Astral, mostly broken but once upon a time brilliantly coloured. There were remains of equally colourful windows, a small pool with brackish rainwater. And ivy. So much ivy, tangling over the broken ears of the statues, creeping through the holes in the walls, following lines in the floor.

“Oh… Oh, Aria… please, forgive me, wherever you are…”

There was no way in all seven hells that Ariadne – Aranea – would hear her in the in-between, but this place felt like it had once been connected to there. Her crying seemed to break the serenity of this room, but she didn’t particularly care. Ariadne would be back before long, one day. Liliris wasn’t sure she would live until then, and even so there was a fair chance she would be born on the other side of Eos. It was like finding a nail in a haystack; there was absolutely no way she would find the person her friend would become in her next life.

It only just struck her.

She’d never live to see eternal darkness, or if Ariadne truly had the power to change fate as Liliris had so foolishly believed.

Her brother had been wrong to let her loose and give her a small advantage on the running front. She should have died in Ariadne’s place, or at least by her side. But it was too little, too late. Liliris reached that souring conclusion after nearly half an hour of quiet crying in what must have been the holiest room of prayer in a temple dedicated to Carbuncle – the minor Astral that watched over the Dreamers.

* * *

“ _...”_

“ _We heard you three years ago, when you cried in the former temple.”_

“ _...”_

“ _Liliris. Do you desire a try at finding your friend, and telling her that you are sorry for what has come to pass personally?”_

“ _What kind of question is that? Of course I do… I would do anything for it.”_

“ _The Accursed told you what awaits you.”_

“ _Figures he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum and not some random person that just got reborn as someone named Ardyn.”_

“ _Then do you accept? Do you wish to enter a cycle of birth and death, for a chance to find Aranea – the woman you know as Ariadne – to tell her you are sorry, Liliris?”_

“ _Yes.”_

“ _So be it.”_

“ _Just one thing. Liliris was the one who got herself trampled to death by a Garula. Iris is the one who wants to find… Aranea, was it?”_


End file.
